Chuck Schumer: Senate like Middle East

Chuck Schumer compared negotiating with Republicans to trying to defuse Israeli-Palestinian tensions after a transportation spending bill failed in the Senate on Thursday.

Just one Republican voted for the bill after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) whipped his members to oppose the bill over spending worries. Democrats were furious, railing for 25 minutes against the Republicans who opposed the bill.

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“At times working with the other side feels like the Middle East peace process — there’s no one to negotiate with,” Schumer said. “What we’re seeing in both houses is a death dance. The Republican Party on fiscal issues is falling apart before our very eyes.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) favorably contrasted Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the lone vote for the spending bill, to McConnell, who Durbin said is constantly testing whether he’s in step with conservatives and also with the House, which pulled its own transportation spending bill on Thursday.

“Looking over his shoulder for Rand Paul, the Libertarians, the most extreme conservatives in the Republican Party,” Durbin said. “He was looking over his shoulder to find where John Boehner was standing. And John Boehner was looking to see where the tea party was standing. That’s the problem with this Republican Party.”

“I don’t know what more the Republicans can do to tarnish their brand,” Majority Leader Harry Reid concluded after the failed vote on transportation spending, which used to be a lay-up for Congress.

McConnell and his leaders spoke only five minutes after Reid and declined to address their barbs specifically, though McConnell said he and his lieutenants would “be a lot briefer than the group that was just before you.”

McConnell said his stance against the spending bill was simple: He wants to adhere to the Budget Control Act’s spending levels, describing Democrats as “spending the entire year to get us to walk away from spending reductions we committed to.”

“Unless you tax, and unless you spend, they don’t have much interest,” McConnell said.